Unite America’s Ross Sherman (“Nearly 35% of the U.S. House faced no meaningful competition in 2026.”):

Two hundred and fifty years ago, Americans declared that their leaders should be chosen by the people, not handed power through coronation. Yet today, over a third of our congressional elections look less like elections and more like coronations.

With candidate filing deadlines now passed in all 50 states, new data from the Unite America Institute finds a whopping 150 House candidates effectively won their races this year without having to secure a single vote. Nearly 35% of the U.S. House will be filled by candidates who faced no meaningful competition for the job.

These 150 candidates, mostly incumbents, ran unopposed in the dominant party primary for districts that the Cook Political Report rates as uncompetitive in the general election. In other words, we already know not only which party is all but guaranteed to win these seats in November, but which person will win.

In all, the 150 pre-elected candidates represent a collective 84.8 million voting-age citizens. Those Americans had no choice over who represents them and no ability to hold their representative accountable at the ballot box.

I had to re-read this to grasp the meaning. There are way more than 150 Congressional Districts in which the winner of a given party primary is essentially assured to take the seat. Indeed, United America, citing a Cook Political Report, estimates that there are only 35 competitive seats, against 205 Safe Republican and 195 Safe Democratic seats.

No, these are seats in which the party nominee faced no primary challenger.

This is the most extreme manifestation of America’s “Primary Problem”— where instead of elections being decided in a low-turnout party primary, elections are decided without a single vote being cast.

Some of the country’s largest congressional delegations have particularly high rates of candidates effectively elected without competition.

In Pennsylvania, 12 of 17 House seats, or 70%, were decided this way. The rate is nearly as high in Virginia, where seven of 11 seats, or 64%, had no meaningful competition. The same is true of five of eight seats in Colorado, eight of 15 in Ohio, eight of 17 in Illinois, 12 of 28 in Florida and 12 of 26 in New York.

The candidates themselves span the political spectrum.

The list includes House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and prominent Freedom Caucus members such as Jim Jordan and Lauren Boebert. It includes progressive members such as Ayanna Pressley, Maxwell Frost and Delia Ramirez.

This is not a Democratic problem or a Republican problem. It is a competition problem. The rules protect incumbents and deny voters meaningful choices regardless of which party dominates a district.

Again, this is not a new phenomenon:

Nor is this an unusual election cycle. In 2024, 169 House members were effectively elected under the same circumstances. The total was 129 in 2022 and 151 in 2020.

Sherman’s solution, which coincidentally aligns with the organization’s raison d’être, is to switch from closed to open primaries.

In sharp contrast, states with open, all-candidate primaries performed considerably better. Under these systems, every candidate appears on the same primary ballot, every voter can participate and the top finishers advance to the general election regardless of party.

Across California, Washington, and Alaska, only five of 63 House seats, or 8%, were effectively decided without competition this year. California had just three such seats out of 52, or 6%. Washington had two out of 10, while Alaska had none. [emphasis in original]

All-candidate primaries cannot guarantee that every race will be competitive. But they make competition possible even in districts dominated by one party. Two Democrats can advance in a heavily Democratic district, or two Republicans in a heavily Republican district, ensuring that voters still have a real choice in November.

That competition matters. Candidates must earn votes, defend their records and appeal to a broader electorate. Voters gain a way to reward effective leadership or demand change.

[…]

Every candidate should have to compete. And every voter deserves a meaningful vote.

Reason‘s Eric Boehm (“There Are 150 Completely Uncompetitive House Races in This Year’s Midterms“), who pointed me to the report, concurs.

Those aren’t perfect ideas. The California primary system, in particular, has attracted critics who dislike how it often results in two candidates from the same party advancing to the general election.

Still, the alternative seems worse. With more than one-third of this year’s House candidates running unopposed, Americans should be embracing any and all ideas that aim to make elections more competitive. In addition to opening up primaries, lower ballot access requirements for third parties would help create more competitive political terrain.

I would have to see data from a broader array of states to draw definitive conclusions, but I see the appeal, especially for one-party-dominant seats—which is to say most seats.

Still, I’m increasingly of the view long championed by my co-blogger, Steven Taylor, that the problem is the single-member districts themselves. Even aside from the gerrymandering issue, whose impact on our elections is overblown, locality-based districts will tend to poorly represent the partisan preferences of the state as a whole.

In my erstwhile and Steven’s current home state of Alabama, for example, roughly a third of voters have preferred the Democratic presidential nominee over the last eight elections. Even fairly-drawn districts, though, would likely produce no more than two seats Democrats could win out of the seven available.

Beyond that, primary elections are themselves a problem. Single-party primaries are particularly bad, in that the most rabid members of the party are the most likely to show up. So, even in relatively competitive districts, the general election will tend to pit a far-right Republican against a far-left Democrat, at least from the perspective of the median voter.

The all-candidate primaries being proposed here might mitigate that problem somewhat. Still, it will be the most motivated voters who show up in the first round. And, absent ranked-choice voting, the second-place candidate may well have less overall appeal than candidates who finished lower.